


You Got Me Waiting

by Euphorion



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse)
Genre: Alcohol, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Canon Compliant, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Multi, Self-Esteem Issues, attempts at a threesome, eventual unrequited Spideytorch, other ships to be added as they appear, this is definitely not how unstable molecules work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21621019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: Ever since he'd met Johnny, there had been something invisible hanging around him, a cloud of slightly miserable nervousness, attuned to anything that might touch him, poised to flip him from laughing, open Johnny to silent frustration, or, in his younger days, furious storms of weeping. In early days he'd assumed it was about Crystal; trying to start college while the girl you think is your true love is trapped in an interdimensional bubble somewhere might have an effect on a boy. But it persisted beyond her, through every short-lived, star-crossed relationship Johnny pursued. This constant shifting in the air around him, like the shimmers of heat over a summer road.Except here, now. Whatever had happened to him during his marriage to the alien woman who was not Alicia, she was the one who'd cracked it. Maybe her betrayal had been a hurt so deep it had thrust past his shields and tugged out again, cracking them open like a husk, and allowing him—eventually, painfully—to step out from behind it. Maybe he had shed it like a snakeskin and left it lying in New York, in the rooms they’d shared. Maybe when he returned he would shrug back into it, needing its protection against the East Coast cold.
Relationships: Jennifer Walters/Wyatt Wingfoot, Johnny Storm/Wyatt Wingfoot, Johnny Storm/Wyatt Wingfoot/Jennifer Walters
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt at a canon compliant examination of Wyatt Wingfoot and Johnny Storm's relationship, and Johnny Storm's journey toward understanding his sexuality through Wyatt's eyes, beginning with Johnny's marriage to "Alicia"/Lyja Lazerfist. As always, though, canon compliance is a losing game, and obviously I am building out scenes we never see. I'll be adding references at the end of chapters that reference specific issues.
> 
> Title from Tristan Prettyman's You Got Me, which is an extremely Wyatt-->Johnny song.

It was a strange feeling, watching Johnny Storm get married. 

Sitting in the pews next to Jennifer Walters in all her pink and green glory, the two of them effectively blocking the view of anyone unlucky enough to be seated behind them, Wyatt nevertheless felt oddly small, oddly old. That’s how you were supposed to feel when your friends started getting married, he thought: like you were being left behind. Like you had to rush to catch up, to find someone you wanted to spend your life with, join them in this new phase.

If it were more acute here than with any of his other friends who had already passed that threshold, it was likely because Johnny was one of his oldest and dearest friends, his roommate in college and in so many ways his gateway into the bizarre, unbelievable, beautiful life he led, to—he smiled sideways at Jen as she dabbed a tear from her eye—well. Perhaps. He tucked that thought away into the inside pocket of his suit for another time.

Or maybe it was something in Johnny’s own attitude. It’s not that he wasn’t happy; he was as happy as Wyatt had ever seen him, in love: Alicia was a wonderful woman, even if her past with Ben Grimm and the discord it caused between Ben and Johnny was troubling, to Johnny and to Wyatt himself. She was a darling of the art world, or at least had been until recently, and a part of the life of the Fantastic Four for long enough that the sudden arrival of aliens or giants or mole-people wouldn’t phase her or chase her away. It was a good match, on the surface of it.

Beyond the surface…

He watched Johnny lean in, a gentle hand on Alicia’s jaw, their mouths meeting brief and sincere, and tried to ignore the entirely unfounded feeling that something was obscurely, deeply wrong. 

Wyatt mostly stuck close to Jen during the reception, enjoying as always the way the crowd swirled around her, amused at the looks she got from the old women of Alicia’s family, though they were perhaps less wary and more complimentary than most crowds, having spent a good bit of time around The Thing. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he saw Sue draw Alicia away to the refreshment’s table, leaving Johnny alone, examining the white flowers on one of the side tables.

Wyatt crossed to him. “John,” he said.

Johnny smiled up at him. “Wyatt.”

Wyatt clinked champagne glasses with him and raised an eyebrow at the floral arrangement. "Tasteful."

“Doom sent them,” Johnny said, touching a flower petal with a finger. “Can you believe it?”

Wyatt smiled at him, trying to catch whatever strange emotion was in the corners of his eyes. “There’s a lot about today that I can’t quite bring myself to believe.”

Johnny twitched away from him, his chin snapping up. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

Wyatt blinked at him, startled. “Nothing sinister, I promise.” He frowned. “Why? Is there something wrong?”

Johnny shook his head immediately, almost before Wyatt asked. “No,” he said, “No, everything’s fine. Weirdly fine, actually.” He chuckled a little. “I really expected someone to crash, you know? The Wizard or someone, break up the proceedings. Especially after Jameson pulled that stunt with the paper.”

Wyatt relaxed, a little. “Perhaps they know you deserve a day just for you.” He gestured to the bouquet. “Doom did, apparently.”

“Sure,” said Johnny wryly. “Until midnight, when they sprout little fangs and turn us all in Latverian werewolves or whatever."

"I'm afraid I'd be leaving you to that fate," Wyatt said, apologetic. "I can't stay."

"Oh," said Johnny. His blue eyes shifted away across Wyatt's face and then back again. "That's a shame." He smiled. "You'd make a good werewolf."

Wyatt smiled back, charmed. "You would not, I think." It was the wrong kind of fae creature entirely for Johnny's lithe frame and pretty features, though Wyatt sometimes suspected there was a similar intensity of power kept under the tight wraps of his friend's will. Johnny arched an eyebrow at him and Wyatt spread his hands. "Burning fur," he explained. "Terrible stench."

Johnny burst out laughing, and the tension around Wyatt's chest eased. Across the room, he caught sight of Alicia, her hand on Jen's arm, her face turned his way as she listened. Bizarrely, she seemed to meet his eyes, and there was an almost imperceptible tightening at the bridge of her nose.

"Where are you going?"

Wyatt shook himself and looked back to Johnny. Alicia was _blind,_ it was merely coincidence, her expression a reaction to something Jen had said. He’d have to ask. "Sorry, what?"

Johnny followed his gaze, laughter still caught in the corner of his mouth. "You and our jade giantess," he said with a nod towards Jen. "Off to single-handedly gain sovereignty for indigenous nations?"

"Not this time," Wyatt said. "Just—I need to go home for a bit."

Johnny nodded and didn't press. "If you ever do want to start that particular fight, you wouldn't be alone in it," he said. "It's been a long time since Reed got to tell the US government he's smarter than they are, I think he's getting itchy."

Wyatt nodded, half amused and half touched. "I know," he said. "I don't think I've really been alone in anything, not in the negative sense. Not since I met you at MC."

Johnny flushed, and Wyatt—overwhelmingly fond—reached down to brush a knuckle over his cheekbone before settling his hand on his shoulder. “Congratulations, Johnny.”

Johnny said nothing for a moment, holding his eyes, his mouth curling in something that was too complicated and fleeting to quite be a smile. He reached up and grabbed Wyatt’s hand on his shoulder, gripping it fiercely. “Thank you,” he said, “I’m very happy,” and he let go.

Wyatt could feel the ghost of that grip for hours, even as he tried to banish it, curling his palm around the steering wheel of Jen's car, around the curve of her hip. 

+

“I’m sorry I couldn’t see it,” he said, nearly a year later and about as far from a chapel in New York City as you could get.

Johnny shrugged, the movement shifting his whole body in an awkward jolt. He was lying propped up on his elbows on the opposite side of the campfire, the bustle of the archeological site dying down around them as everyone settled in to sleep. “It’s fine,” he said quietly. “No one did. Not even Ben, and he knows Alicia best.” His hands drew little unthinking circles in the sand. “It took her dad to notice, can you believe that? The Puppet Master himself.” He smiled a little. “Takes one to know one, I guess.”

Wyatt watched him. Ever since he'd met Johnny, there had been something invisible hanging around him, a cloud of slightly miserable nervousness, attuned to anything that might touch him, poised to flip him from laughing, open Johnny to silent frustration, or, in his younger days, furious storms of weeping. In early days he'd assumed it was about Crystal; trying to start college while the girl you think is your true love is trapped in an interdimensional bubble somewhere might have an effect on a boy. But it persisted beyond her, through every short-lived, star-crossed relationship Johnny pursued. This constant shifting in the air around him, like the shimmers of heat over a summer road. Some kind of involuntary, emotional shield.

Except here, now. Whatever had happened to him during his marriage to the alien woman who was not Alicia, she was the one who'd cracked it. Maybe her betrayal had been a hurt so deep it had thrust past his shields and tugged out again, cracking them open like a husk, and allowing him—eventually, painfully—to step out from behind it. Maybe he had shed it like a snakeskin and left it lying in New York, in the rooms they’d shared. Maybe when he returned he would shrug back into it, needing its protection against the East Coast cold.

Maybe he was just too tired to hold onto it anymore, and the huge, cold openness of the sky above had pulled it away to the stars.

Wyatt wished he could say definitely that what remained was better, a clear-headed happiness, a blue sky after a storm, but instead Johnny was just—adrift. He was _there,_ with Wyatt and Jennifer and his friend Bridget, laughing and chatting and helping move whatever they needed moving, but every time wasn't actively engaged it was like all the life sank back under the surface of him. 

He itched to do something about it, to run his palms down Johnny’s back as if he could feel the misalignment of soul and body in the line of his spine, as if he could pop it back together like a dislocated joint. He’d been trying anything he could think of, wearing him out in any way he could, foolish daredevil games that would have been dangerous if he hadn’t been so sure Johnny would never hurt him. But the laughing joy these brought his friend was short-lived, and only moments after the exertion ended it faded away again.

He had only one other idea for a solution. When he made the suggestion to Jen, she just stared at him. And then she blinked twice, rapidly, and said, "oh, _that's_ how you want to play this? Really?"

Wyatt raised his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

"Wyatt, honey, you've basically had longing narration boxes drifting around your head ever since he got here," said Jen, as if that explained anything. "If this is the way to clear the air, sure, I'm game."

Wyatt frowned. "I would prefer you also enjoy the experience."

“He’s not really my cup of tea, partially because I could probably fit him _in_ my cup of tea, but even I can’t deny he’s pretty,” Jen said, wrapping her long, muscled arms around his neck. "I think I can endeavor to have some fun."

"Can I ask you one more favor, then?" Wyatt asked, his hands coming up to skim over the muscles of her back. "Can you be the one to...initiate things? I'm not sure I want him to know that this was my idea."

Jen quirked a forest-green eyebrow at him. "Why not?"

"I'm not certain he's ever done anything with men," Wyatt explained. "If it comes from you, it will be less abrupt, less threatening." He hesitated, then added, his voice shifting in his mouth a little oddly: "He is less likely to suspect it is a joke."

Jen bit her lip and pulled his head abruptly against her shoulder, her nails in his hair. Wyatt—confused as much by the sudden rush of nervous sadness that rose to his throat as by her almost precognizant comfort—went with it easily. You got used to being manhandled after spending a few days around Jennifer Walters. After years, it was second nature. 

"Yeah," Jen murmured. "Of course I'll ask."

Wyatt closed his eyes, just for a moment, and decided it was not a good time to examine his relief too closely. 

Jen nuzzled along his cheekbone. "Tonight?" she suggested. "You’ve still got some whiskey in your tent, right? Might lower some barriers. Hm?"

He kissed her, slow and soft, and pulled back. She smiled at him and touched a finger to his nose. "Don't worry, lover," she said, "I'll drink most of it, he won't get enough to do anything he'll regret."

Wyatt nodded, his hands skimming down her arms, their fingers tangling briefly together. "I know," he said. "I trust you."

She cupped his jaw in one gentle, impossibly strong hand. "You really do," she said. "Thanks, Wyatt, that's really something."

+

The world conspired to make their simple plan a more complex one, and it ended up being past midnight before Wyatt was able to corner Johnny by the campfire, the canteen of whiskey in his back pocket rather than in Jen’s capable hands. She’d been called away to an auxiliary dig site to help move some rocks in a minor cave-in and had yet to check in. Wyatt wasn’t worried; he hadn’t gotten this far in life worrying about her. But Johnny was only here for a few more days, and this plan somehow felt like something that would never work in a place that was not here and a time that was not now.

Which is how he ended up drinking (slowly) and talking (much less slowly) with Johnny for hours, always finding another topic of conversation to delay or prevent Johnny from calling it a night and returning to his tent alone.

“I asked Jen to marry me,” Wyatt said, to the great sky above, exactly the right amount of tipsy to feel like that was a good idea.

Johnny spluttered against the mouth of his canteen. “You _what?_ I’ve been here three days with both of you! You never said—” he cut himself off. “She—she couldn’t have said _no_.” His disbelief was as palpable as it was flattering.

Wyatt shook his head. “She said yes,” he said, and raised a hand to forestall Johnny’s opening mouth. “At first. And then we both said no, later.”

“God,” said Johnny, and took another gulp of whiskey. Wyatt held out a hand for it, not really because he needed more, but because he didn’t want Johnny too drunk for this, if it did end up happening tonight. Johnny, a touch reluctantly, handed it to him. “ _Why?_ ”

Wyatt licked his lips, searching for an explanation that rang true to his heart and what he knew of hers. “We’re—not the marrying kind,” he settled on, at last. “Not together. I would like to be married, someday, but it wasn’t—she is something to me that can never be replaced or substituted, but that thing is not _wife,_ and I am not _husband_ to her. It’s just.” He shrugged, giving up. “Different.”

“But you’re so,” Johnny said, even more at a loss for words than Wyatt. “God, I always thought...” He trailed off.

Wyatt drank, letting the smoke of the liquor sink into the space underneath his tongue, and waited.

“Whenever things were bad with A—with Lyja,” Johnny said, rehearsed, like he’d had to say it in his head several times before it was ready to come out of his mouth, “I would think about the two of you, how happy you always were with each other. How open and joyful.” He paused, and then said, half-defiant, “how much sex you had. If you can’t make it work—”

“Can’t?” Wyatt frowned. “It’s not about not being able to, Johnny. Jen and I _could_ be married, I think. We might even be good at it. There are worlds, I’m sure, where we are, and where we’re happy. But it’s not the course this life has taken us.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck, a little rueful. “Besides, as you yourself said, there’s nothing to stop us from making one another happy, and having a lot of good sex, without ever donning rings.”

Johnny licked his lips, conceding the point more through inaction than anything else.

“John,” said Wyatt, before he could think better of it, “I want to ask you something, and I want you to please take it as coming from someone who is your friend, with all the love I have for you.”

“Geez,” said Johnny, but he wasn’t quite laughing, “way to make a guy nervous.”

Wyatt sat up, tipping his cowboy hat back from his forehead so Johnny could fully see his face. “Did you enjoy having sex with your ex-wife?”

Johnny stared at him, gone completely still. The fire between them blazed briefly brighter, his urge to explode at Wyatt being channeled away from his body, perhaps, or a distraction from his silence, or maybe it was coincidence and Johnny was just attempting to gather the right words to tell him to fuck off. He opened his mouth. “I—”

“Hot damn,” Jen said, stepping up to the edge of the fire pit. “I know they were like, ‘we need you to lift these boulders that weigh several tons’, but they literally did weigh several tons.” She cracked her neck, then winked at Wyatt. “You two are a sight for sore eyes. Or sore arms, really.”

“Has anyone told you, Jennifer Walters,” said Johnny, his voice full of relief, “that you have an _astounding_ sense of timing?”

Jen smirked. “Yeah, but I don’t listen, because usually it’s just my writers complimenting themselves.” She raised her eyebrows, looking at Wyatt knowingly. “Why? I interrupt something?””

“Nothing at all,” Wyatt murmured, offering her the canteen. 

She took it, taking a long pull, then leaned down to kiss him thoroughly, her mouth warm and tasting of whiskey, contrasting deliciously with the cool night air. Wyatt sighed contentedly against her mouth.

From across the fire, Johnny wolf-whistled.

Jen grinned against Wyatt’s lips and kissed him again, quicker, a decisive peck. When she pulled back she raised an eyebrow at him. Stomach suddenly alive with nerves, Wyatt gave her a small nod.

Jen walked around the fire, deliberately swaying her hips. She stopped in front of Johnny and leaned down, bent halfway at the waist, her arms bracketing him against the stone.

“Oh,” said Johnny, throat bobbing. “Hello.”

“Hi,” said Jen, and kissed him.

Johnny’s eyes flew open wide. His gaze slid immediately to Wyatt, but, Wyatt saw, he did kiss her back. He tried to smile reassuringly but his lips were suddenly too open for it to come across as anything but hungry, the whiskey in his blood making the contrast between his friends—Jen’s muscled, prowling strength, Johnny’s slim body drawn tight and shocked like a bowstring—especially, well. Intoxicating. He ran his palms over his thighs to have something to touch.

Jen broke the kiss and leaned in to whisper something in Johnny’s ear. The flickering firelight hid his blush, but Wyatt knew it would be there. He could see Jen’s green fingers threading through the gold of Johnny’s hair, saw him bite his lip as Jen kissed his jaw. But Johnny’s eyes never unlocked from his, blazing blue even with the firelight and the pre-dawn grey leeching away the color from all else. 

“Wyatt,” said Johnny, his voice thin with nerves. It wasn’t a question, but the need for it to be answered hung heavy.

“Yes,” said Wyatt immediately. “Yes.”

Johnny stood up suddenly, ducking under and away from Jen, and then spun to face her. “Right,” he said, his full _hot-shot celebrity Johnny Storm_ mask slotted into place. “Never knew I got you so hot, Shulkie.”

Jen shrugged fluidly, to her credit not even sparing Wyatt a glance. “What can I say, a girl gets lonely out in the big wide desert.” She grinned. “Some places are so big they even feel empty to _me._ ”

Johnny raised his eyebrows. “You mean Wingfoot here isn’t keeping you entertained?”

“I do my best,” Wyatt said, feeling his own voice shift into a drawl, “but she’s a lot of woman.” He stood up. “Variety is the spice of life, I think the saying goes.”

Johnny stared at him for a second, and then Jen stepped into his space again. She kissed him slower this time, and he closed his eyes through it, brows twitched together, like he was concentrating. Wyatt thought: _cute._

“Right,” said Jen, pulling back, and picked him bodily up, slinging him over her shoulder. 

“Oh,” Johnny said, and laughed. “You, Tarzan, me, Jane?”

“Something like that,” said Jen, and started off toward her tent.

Wyatt followed, tucking the whiskey back into his back pocket. Johnny was watching him; Wyatt could see Jen had one hand on his ass, keeping him steady, and was struck with a brief pang of jealousy.

“What’s that make you, big guy?” Johnny asked, raising his eyebrows. “Jane #2?”

Wyatt shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I think not.”

Jen said, "you're the only Jane here tonight, Torchie."

"Hey," said Johnny, sounding more like he thought he should be offended than like he was actually offended. All of his bravado seemed to leave him as soon as Jen set him and and he stepped inside her (large and very swanky) tent. He paused just inside the flap. Wyatt, stepping up behind him, could see him trembling.

He continued the momentum, pressing himself against Johnny’s back, indulging himself in his warmth. He hooked his chin over Johnny’s shoulder and was rewarded by Johnny shivering against him. “Are you alright?” he asked, wanting to make sure there were no second thoughts before he pushed on this part of the plan.

“Yeah,” said Johnny, his hands coming up to touch Wyatt’s where Wyatt’s had slipped around against his chest, against his heart. “Of course.”

Wyatt straightened slightly so he could push at Johnny’s shoulders, turning him in his arms, and Johnny took the suggestion with gratifying eagerness, nearly tripping over his own feet. His eyes were focused slightly behind Wyatt, probably on Jen, and, selfishly, Wyatt didn’t want that; he ran a finger up the line of Johnny’s jaw so Johnny would look at him before leaning down and claiming the perfect bow of his mouth.

Johnny took a sharp breath through his nose. He didn’t pull away; his hands settled loose on Wyatt’s chest, neither pulling him closer nor—as Wyatt had feared—pushing him away. He kissed Wyatt back, slowly, like he wasn’t sure he was supposed to. 

Wyatt ran the backs of his knuckles down his arms and kissed him again, close-mouthed still, Johnny’s lips impossibly soft. His hands curled around Johnny’s waist and that seemed to flip a switch; suddenly Johnny’s hips canted forward into his, his mouth opening against Wyatt’s. Wyatt, dizzy at the invitation, deepened the kiss, exploring Johnny’s mouth with his tongue, and Johnny _whined_ at him, the sound going directly to Wyatt’s already too-interested dick.

It wasn’t _surprising,_ the way Wyatt’s body responded to Johnny. Certainly he’d always been aware that Johnny was gorgeous, and his type, if he were to conceive of having a type for men (as opposed to his type in women, which ran considerably larger). It was an active enough interest to allow him to think up this plan in the first place, after all. But the intensity of it—the immediacy of reaction, the way he never wanted to stop kissing him, the two hundred new fantasies spinning out of that one unthinking sound; the way he was almost overwhelmingly tempted to send Jen away to sleep in his tent and let him _have_ this. Well. That was… something.

Hands on his shoulders pulled him back from the mental whirlpool and Johnny’s mouth both. Johnny swayed as he pulled back, his mouth slick from Wyatt’s tongue, and it took Jen physically turning his head with gentle but firm hands for him to look away. Her kisses were no less heated than his had been with Johnny, but there was something warning in them, too; he kissed her back intently, trying to show the depth of his gratitude for the reminder.

She pulled back with a sigh, turning with him to look back at Johnny. He’d barely moved, staring at both of them with pupils blown wide, his gaze flickering from Jen to Wyatt’s eyes to Wyatt’s mouth and back to Jen again, as if he was unsure what to look at, what he might be allowed to touch. He was blushing, the delicate pink of it brightest at his cheekbones and the shells of his ears.

“He really is so pretty, isn’t he?” Jen murmured in Wyatt’s ear, loud enough for Johnny to hear.

Wyatt almost laughed aloud at the understatement, but he knew it would hit Johnny wrong, so he tried to push everything he meant into the word when he murmured, “beautiful.”

Johnny squirmed, his long eyelashes dipping over his eyes as if he couldn’t quite take the combined weight of their gaze. His blush was spreading down his throat, disappearing under the line of his shirt. Wyatt wanted to pull it off him, but hesitated, not wanting to lead the way too much, wanting to maintain the illusion they’d built—never solid, and constantly crumbling under his own feet as well as Johnny’s—that this was in any way for Jen.

As if reading his mind, Jen reached out and tugged at the neckline of the shirt. “This real?” she asked.

Johnny clearly knew what she meant; swallowing, he shook his head. Wyatt could feel Jen’s cheek shift against his as she smirked. “Get it off, then.”

Johnny closed his eyes for a second, and the unstable molecules of his shirt responded, going iridescent and then vanishing. Jen hummed and stepped around Wyatt, and he was unbelievably grateful for the opportunity to just stare. 

He’d seen Johnny shirtless plenty, but there was something in this—the blush spreading across his pecs, the half-defiant cant of his hips, they way he’d tucked his hands in his jean pockets for lack of anything to touch and they were pulling his waistline down, emphasizing the trim line of his waist and revealing just the tops of his hipbones—all this, coupled with the revelation-non-revelation of their kiss, had Wyatt breathless with want.

“Hang on,” said Johnny, and held up a hand to stop Jen as she leaned down to kiss him again. “This, this doesn’t seem very fair.” He gestured at Jen’s clothes.

Jen stopped, then looked at Wyatt. “He’s got a point, lover.”

Wyatt managed to snap himself out of it, nodding back at her. He saw her start to pull off her shirt and turned to his own clothes, undoing the button on his uncomfortably snug jeans and resettling them on his hips a little before turning to his shirt.

“You better appreciate these,” he heard Jen warn, “my letters pages have been full of schmucks desperate for a look since 1989.”

“What?” Johnny asked, sounding baffled. “Wyatt, do you have any idea what she’s—”

Wyatt was in the middle of pulling off his shirt, his face obscured by the fabric, but he assumed that Johnny had stopped talking in reaction to Jen taking off her bra. It was an understandable reaction, and when he pulled the shirt over his head he saw that she was in fact topless, her hair falling forward over her shoulders, one hand sliding up to cup a green breast and tweak a nipple. He licked his lips.

She wasn’t watching him, though; she was looking at Johnny, her eyebrows arched, and Johnny—his lip between his teeth, his expression indecipherable—was staring at _Wyatt,_ at the undone fly of his jeans, the obvious bulge of his erection. Wyatt took a breath, his heart stuttering.

“Geez,” said Jen, voice teasing, “a girl could get a complex.”

Johnny’s gaze shot back to her, as if he’d been caught looking at something he shouldn’t, his eyes wide. He stared at her for a long moment; raised one hand as if to touch; Wyatt stepped closer, in case he needed encouragement or more reassurance he could do so, perhaps an example of how Jen liked to be touched. 

But it was like his movement broke some kind of spell. Johnny gave a wild kind of laugh, the whole line of his body shifting curled, defensive. “I, uh. Wow! This isn’t happening.”

Wyatt stopped dead, his heart stuttering again, for entirely different reasons. Jen shook out her hair, looking unimpressed. “I can promise that it’s real, if that’s what you mean. Dream sequences have different panel edges, see—”

“No,” said Johnny sharply, “it’s—this doesn’t. It’s—it’s pity, right? That’s what this is?”

Jen’s eyebrows flew up. “Excuse me?”

“It’s pity,” Johnny insisted, still talking too fast, his voice shading bitter and knowing. “Poor sad Johnny Storm, right, married the wrong woman and she was an alien anyway, no one really wants him, not even his own wife, not really, never made him _feel_ it—”

“Johnny,” said Wyatt, all of his desire turned to nausea at the expression on his friend’s face. “It’s not—”

“Wyatt,” Johnny snapped. “Don’t.”

Heart aching, Wyatt didn’t.

Jen did instead. “Despite what you might think,” she said coolly, “I’m not really in the _charity fuck_ business.”

Johnny looked at her, the bitterness in his expression twisting from anger to sorrow _._ “I know,” he said softly. “I—I do know. I’m sorry, Jenny.”

Jen reached out to him; Johnny dodged, letting out a little huff of breath. “I, uh, I need some air.”

He shouldered past Wyatt, not looking at him, and out of the tent.

Wyatt stared at Jen; she stared back, her eyebrows in her hair. “Well,” she said. “That could have gone better.”

"I don't understand," Wyatt said, his voice coming out small. "He was enjoying himself, I could tell, and then..."

"I don't have your answers, babe," Jen said softly. "Not this time." He mouth curled. "Not my home-medium, you know?"

Wyatt said nothing.

She cocked her head at him. “Well? Go on, go after him.”

Wyatt took a breath. “Right.” He tucked himself away, re-buttoning his jeans, and pulled on a jacket, giving himself time to calm down, find his voice again, remind himself he’d done enough damage. There was temptation to respond to Johnny point by point, argue him down, but that had never worked with him. The things he said in anger were never things he wanted to discuss, or even _could_ discuss, yet; they were smoke from an unseen fire, though he’d never use the metaphor aloud. Half the ways he thought about Johnny Storm would make a poet roll their eyes.

He found Johnny at the edge of the canyon, sitting alone, his legs dangling out over empty air.

"I’m sorry," said Johnny abruptly as he approached. "I uh, I fucked that up."

Wyatt's whole chest hurt. "Please," he said, "there is nothing to apologize for."

Johnny glanced at him doubtfully, then looked away again as Wyatt settled on the ground at his side.

"It occurs to me, perhaps far too late," said Wyatt, after a long silence where at least Johnny didn't move away from him, "that with her coloring Jen is not unlike a Skrull. She was once mistaken for one, I believe, at an intergalactic diner.”

Johnny glanced at him, startled. Some of that nervous energy was hanging in the air around him again, his leg jiggling against stone. "No," he said, "no, it wasn't her, she's." He shook his head. "Nothing like Lyja, really."

Wyatt closed his teeth hard around _so it was me_ like a horse around a bit, letting Johnny steer the conversation where he would.

"I appreciate you—including me," Johnny said at last. "Really I do, it's. You two are amazing, and so hot, and everything I should," he took a choked breath, "I should. I—" His face crumpled, and for a horrified moment Wyatt thought he would cry, that he had made Johnny cry, but he rallied, his fists curling at his sides instead. "I just, um." He bit his lip. "I can't. I'm sorry. But I can't."

Wyatt wanted to kiss him again, on his trembling mouth, on his eyelids, to smooth out the sadness from the corners of his eyes. "You don't have to," he said instead, reaching out to touch Johnny's knee. "Not ever, not anything you don't want."

"Ha," Johnny said. His eyes flickering to Wyatt's hand, and Wyatt removed it immediately. "Right."

Wyatt licked his lips. "Johnny," he started.

"Thanks, Wyatt," said Johnny, loudly. "I'm just—I'm gonna have a quick fly around, clear my head a little." He smiled, cheerful and bright and empty. "Back soon."

He slipped sideways off the edge of the cliff.

Wyatt's heart dipped, and when Johnny rose, blazing and curling through the dawn, his heart didn't really rise with him. He ran his hands over his face, trying not to feel the brush of Johnny's gaze across his knuckles like the slice of a knife. He'd—hopefully it was temporary, hopefully it was just too soon after, but. He'd always been able to touch Johnny. And Johnny had always been quick to touch him—an arm across his shoulders, a brush of shoulders, even occasionally fingers slipped into his (guiding him somewhere, or gripping his palm hard at a wedding). If he'd ruined that—

He heard Jen come up behind him. "I'm afraid," he said quietly, "I may have inadvertently ended something beautiful and important." He swallowed. "More important than I recognized."

Jen leaned down to prop her arms on his head and presumably watch Johnny, too. It was hard not to. The morning sun was still weak, lemon-yellow on the horizon, and Johnny’s blaze was nearer, redder, cutting clouds to ribbons and leaving them drifting and confused behind him. Wyatt had the embarrassingly dramatic thought that he knew how they felt.

“No,” said Jen. “I don’t think you’ve ended anything. It might not have gone how you wanted, but this?” She reached her hands down in front of his face, green fingers angled to frame the tableau—the canyon before them, primordial with mist; the tawny stone of the mountains; the solitary figure alighting on the other side, his fire dimming. “This is totally the beginning of something.” 

Wyatt closed his eyes, leaning his head back against her chest. “The beginning of what?"

Jen pressed a kiss to the side of his head. "I don't know,” she said. “But something tells me we’re gonna find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Johnny & "Alicia" get married in Fantastic Four #300; Wyatt, Johnny, and Jen all hang out at an archaeological dig in Fantastic Four #394. Wyatt's reference to asking Jen to marry him and then them both deciding against it happens in She-Hulk: Ceremony (which comes with warnings for some kind of weird takes on Native American culture and spirituality, but then, so does FF #394. Comics!)
> 
> A HUGE thank you to all my pals on twitter who have helped me with continuity questions, and I WILL be continuing to ask questions as this continues and we get into the REAL sad stuff. That's right, it only gets sadder from here on out! hahhahah only *checks notes* 30 years of comics left to cover. Oh god what have I done to myself


	2. Chapter 2

Wyatt said goodbye to Jen at the conclusion of the dig—Johnny, in typical fashion, had been called away by a spectral vision of his sister. He’d apparently left word with a woman Wyatt had seen around, Laura Greene, but she had vanished as well. He tried not to be concerned about that, or to think too hard about Johnny’s eagerness to leave. If Sue was in trouble, of course he would fly to her aid; there had simply been no time for goodbyes.

Jen hugged him hard, popping several vertebrae in his spine, and then set him back down on his feet. “Good luck,” she said. 

“Thank you,” said Wyatt. “I have lots of support. The Keewazi elders are very patient with my misadventures.”

Jen grinned. “I’m sure they are,” she said, head on one side, “but that’s not what I meant. I know you’re not usually one to get too wrapped up in your head, but this stuff with Torchie—he gets under your skin.”

Wyatt shook his head, smiling back at her. “I’m alright, truly.”

“If you say so.” Jen flipped her sunglasses up into her dark, green-sheened hair. “Next time your wandering steps take you back to Manhattan, though, hit me up, just to soothe my anxious mind.”

“I would anyway,” said Wyatt. “You know that.”

“‘Course.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “See you soon, stud.”

Wyatt swung himself onto his bike and went home.

He spent a few weeks attending to Keewazi business. There was quite a lot to do; in the wake of Carlton Beatrice’s attempt to steal the soul of the world through the teachings of Wyatt’s grandmother, a great number of medicine women and spiritual healers had experienced visions, disruptions in their meditations, and other upsets to the small magicks that held their practices together. Wyatt wondered to himself whether the ripples had spread as far as the offices of the Sorcerer Supreme in New York, or if a corrupt CEO attempting to co-opt Native American beliefs and land was beneath his notice.

He ran a hand over his face. He was being unfair; he’d never met Strange and had no reason to think he wouldn’t help if help was requested. He wished he knew whether his reluctance to do so was because he suspected the elders wouldn’t look kindly on the interference of another white man into their affairs, or if it was his own pride. 

Rain Falling West knocked on his open office door, and Wyatt pushed himself back from his desk to smile tiredly at her. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said, leaning against his door frame. “It’s weird to see you spend so much time inside.”

Wyatt spread his hands. “Reviewing petitions,” he said. “I’m not sure exactly what they expect me to do—as far as I can tell, all of Beatrice’s influence died with him, and this is just. Aftershocks, like from an earthquake.”

Rain shrugged. “So don’t do anything,” she said.

Wyatt raised his eyebrows at her. “And if I’m wrong?”

She grinned. “Then do something about it when you find out you are,” she said, ever practical.

Wyatt sighed. He knew that failing to immediately understand the intricacies of spiritual medicine—specifically women’s medicine, which he was trained in more than most or perhaps any Keewazi man before him but still was not a natural gift—was not a flaw of his general leadership; certainly this aftermath of soul-stealing was not a situation his father had ever had to deal with. But.

“It’s just, it feels like the first real problem that’s been dropped in my lap,” he said, “and it’s frustrating to feel like I can’t fix this, either, I just have to wait.”

His sister tucked her hair behind her ear, her eyes suddenly sharp. “‘Either’?”

Wyatt winced. “Uh."

“Is this about Jennifer?” Rain crossed to his chair and sat down, Wyatt’s personal life apparently five times more fascinating than tribal business. “You saw her at the archaeology dig, right? I knew you’d been unusually quiet since you got back.”

“Yes,” said Wyatt, and then, “well, no.” He tried again. “I saw her there. She was, ah. Involved.” He felt his cheeks heat. “But it’s not about her, the thing I have to fix, we’re fine. She’s lovely.”

“There’s someone else?” Rain said, sounding to Wyatt’s ears a bit unfairly surprised at the prospect. “Someone _new?_ ”

"Yes and no," said Wyatt, and then when it was clear that wasn't enough answer, "I, uh, did something to make things awkward between myself and my friend Johnny."

"The Human Torch?" Rain raised her eyebrows. "You guys were roommates at MC, right?"

Wyatt nodded, considering adding any number of things and deciding against all of them.

Rain hummed. "Disappointing," she said. "I was hoping for something spicy in the romance department."

Wyatt said nothing, which thankfully seemed to be the right move, because Rain just stared at him for another moment and then sighed, standing up. "So what are you going to do about it?"

Wyatt blinked. "The petitions?" 

"No, stupid," said Rain. "Like you said, there's nothing you can do about that but wait. If this thing with your friend happened at the dig, it's already been a few weeks, and human emotions probably settle faster than the magic underweaving all the world." She smiled at him. "Maybe the aftershocks have settled."

He shuffled his papers together. "Maybe," he said.

"Call him," Rain commanded, and knocked a knuckle on his desk. “Boss.”

Wyatt—feeling cowardly—did not call him. He threw himself into other, non-mystical work, mostly disentangling Keewazi Nation from United States tax law, and then, when he felt like going out of his mind from it, he went to Manhattan.

The flight was familiar, and he felt a strange nervousness coiling in his chest as they slid eastward through the sky. He knew it both was and wasn't about the prospect of seeing Johnny; he had no concrete plans to do so, that wasn't the point of his trip, but the Fantastic Four always loomed large over New York and he couldn't pretend he wasn't hoping for some sort of—serendipity. A chance meeting in the street, surprise erasing boundaries that could be erected by anticipation. Perhaps Johnny would even hug him before he remembered their new, artificial distance.

Perhaps Rain was right. Maybe it had been long enough that all would be forgotten. It was pathetic, how hopeful that thought made him, and he found himself feeling optimistic for the first time in weeks as his plane ate the miles. Flying into Manhattan always meant the beginning of something. It wasn't just the city itself, but what the city had always been for him, ever since his freshman year: a gateway to other worlds, to adventures beyond imagination, and Johnny ever its smiling, golden-headed keeper.

He told himself he would try to get an appointment with Strange, just for advice, but found himself at a payphone calling Jen instead.

"Wyatt! Honestly, just the man I was longing to hear from."

He smiled at the genuine warmth in her voice. "Oh?"

"I've been up to my ears in casework. Haven't had a moment of fun in weeks, a good brawl in longer. I'm absolutely dying to get dressed up and go somewhere too rich for my blood." He could hear her smirk. "I seem to remember you know how to show a girl a good time."

"Not sure how much help I'll be with the brawl," said Wyatt, "but I'm always glad to go anywhere with you on my arm."

"Oh, when you're around, something always seems to show up asking to be punched," said Jen happily. "You know the address—pick me up at seven?"

"It's a date," said Wyatt, and then wondered if he shouldn't have. "How, uh, how rich are we talking? I didn't bring a suit."

"No worries. I'll dress swank enough for both of us, and they're not gonna turn that beautiful face of yours away."

"Oh, I doubt anyone will be looking at me at all," Wyatt said, remembering some of Jen's previous "swank" outfits. 

"I wouldn't be so sure," said Jen. "I'm a familiar sight these days, but the public's got an insatiable appetite for tall, handsome, and built like a Ford truck." She hung up.

Wyatt checked into his hotel, showered, changed into a different plain white tee, and headed back out.

It was easy. It was always easy, with Jen, and Wyatt was kind of regretting his decision not to bring her flowers by the time they arrived at the restaurant, a French place way above their usual pay grade. The maitre'd gave Wyatt a single once-over in his leather jacket, but it didn't seem unkind; more likely he was just deciding he didn't have a sport's coat to offer in his size. Wyatt gave him an apologetic smile.

“Been taking some high-spending clients lately?” he asked as they sat down. 

Jen blinked at him, and then laughed. “Oh, this? No, Jan lets me use her standing table so long as I give her a head's up."

Wyatt looked around. Their table was prime real estate, right by one of the large windows looking out at windswept Manhattan streets. There was a woman in a _tiara_ at the next table. It was a small, modest tiara, but still.

"She pays for this table to be free for her on a regular basis?" He asked, not sure whether he was impressed or horrified at the gross display of wealth. "Whether or not she actually uses it?"

"I know, right?" said Jen. "That's what happens when you've got that WASP money."

Wyatt snorted, laying his napkin in his lap, more at the amusement in Jen's face than at the pun itself. She had her chin propped in one hand, appraising him, a pinky in the corner of her smile, and he appraised her back. She looked gorgeous—she always looked gorgeous—but tense, and relatively understated, her hair swept up off her neck, her dress simple and black and clinging.

"How are you, Jen?" he asked.

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “The better for seeing you, that’s for sure. Things have been. Weird.” She flicked a nail against her water glass, making it ring. “I went to Reed’s memorial service a few weeks ago.”

“Ah,” said Wyatt, the twitchiness and the overwork adding up. “I got an invite, but.” He stopped. He hadn’t wanted to impose himself on Johnny, make his mourning more unbearable, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to broach that topic quite yet. “How was it?”

“Odd,” said Jen. “I’ve never been to any kind of funeral service attended by so many people convinced the guy being mourned isn’t actually dead.”

Wyatt raised his eyebrows at her. “They think he’s alive?”

Jen shrugged. “Sue does,” she said. “Johnny, too, maybe, or at least he’s going along with whatever she’s ferreting out. His seems like hope. Hers…” She shook her head. “We’ll see, you know? Stranger things have happened.”

Wyatt nodded, thinking about Johnny’s capacity for hope, and tucked a little bit of it into his chest next to his heart. Reed was family, and his loss had hurt. “Have they asked you to rejoin the team?”

“No,” Jen said, to his surprise, and then hesitated. “Scott Lang’s still around. And it seems like Lyja has been helping them out.”

"Lyja?" Wyatt asked, an unpleasant little shock down his spine. “Johnny’s ex-wife?”

Jen made a face. “The very same.”

Wyatt remembered the tightening of Alicia-but-not-Alicia’s eyes at the wedding, the expression he now knew _had_ been her seeing him. Seeing him, making Johnny laugh. Making him comfortable. “How, uh,” he started quietly. “How does he—”

The waiter interrupted to ask for their drinks order, and he fell silent. Jen glanced around, squinting, for something Wyatt couldn't see, and then ordered a Moscow mule. 

Wyatt raised his eyebrows at her. She shrugged. "If we were on panel, I'd get wine, or maybe a martini. Something with a slender stem I could twirl between my pretty green fingers, you know? But it's just the two of us, and between you and me, I like the little copper mugs."

Wyatt ordered an old fashioned, waving away the wine list when the waiter offered to leave it with him.

“You were saying something,” said Jen. “Before we got drinks.”

“Oh,” said Wyatt, knowing he was chickening out. “I don’t remember.”

Jen hummed, clearly not buying it. She leaned in and lowered her voice. "Since it is just the two of us, how are _you?"_

"I'm fine," said Wyatt, and at her look insisted, "I am. I've been dealing with some magical aftermath of our misadventure with Beatrice, so I thought I'd come see if Strange had any advice."

Jen hummed. "I guess that's kind of nice."

Wyatt blinked at her. "What is?"

She shrugged. "Knowing that still happened," she said. "If we had to almost get married and then break up, I guess I'm glad that someone is feeling something about it later, besides me in my quiet moments." She reached out to touch his jaw. "Sorry it's giving you headaches, though."

Wyatt tried to fit his experience of the world into the language she spoke half the time. "It's not—in continuity? For you?"

"Debatable," Jen said, and accepted her drink from the waiter. "Depends on the moment, it feels like, which is a real bitch, emotionally."

Wyatt took his drink and thanked the waiter, who—he noticed now—was so incredibly stereotypically a waiter in a French restaurant he even had the little mustache. When he glanced back at Jen she was checking her lipstick in the shining copper of her mug. Her reflection winked at him.

"So," she said, "you've got no designs on checking in on a certain blond, this trip?"

Wyatt sighed theatrically and took a long sip of whiskey. So much for changing the subject.

Jen laughed at him. "Oh c'mon," she said. "I leave you on the Oklahoma plains looking like a kicked puppy, and now you don't want to talk about it at all?"

Wyatt set down his drink and found he did, actually, want to talk about it, now that it was happening. "No...designs, exactly," he said slowly. "Daydreams, maybe, of some kind of chance meeting where he didn't know I was coming and had no time to get defensive." 

"Do you think he would?" Jen asked.

Wyatt blew out a breath, frustrated. "I don't know," he admitted. "I'm not used to not knowing. That's the thing I’m kicking myself over most, I think. I introduced uncertainty into something that has always felt certain.”

“Nothing is ever _really_ certain, though,” said Jen slowly. “Look at me, right? I did the whole law school thing, I got a high-paying, rewarding job, I had a five-year-plan, hell, I had a ten-year-plan. I was pretty damn sure what my life would look like at 35, and it didn’t include jade green highlighter and the sudden ability to tear up a city block with my bare hands.” She took a sip. “Uncertainty means the opportunity to change, to become something new. And trust me, that’s not all bad.”

“But,” said Wyatt, and then stopped. It was rare he felt like he disagreed with her, and he tried to examine his impulse to do so, pushing back on the _I don’t want things to change_ that was on the tip of his tongue. Didn’t he? Wasn’t that what he had wanted in the first place? To help Johnny change, help him feel more comfortable in his own skin, safe, to be able to let down that ever-present, instinctive defensiveness? Didn’t he (selfishly, his brain interjected) want to be the one to make him feel that way?

And, deeper, even more selfish—the image of Johnny, shirtless, his blue eyes blown wide and lips slick from Wyatt’s tongue—hadn’t he just _wanted?_

The waiter came back to take their food order before he’d managed to figure out how to say any part of what he was thinking, and once he'd gone Wyatt looked back at Jen to find her watching him, face sympathetic. “I don’t have to hassle you on this,” she said. “I just think you're here, and if you leave again without talking to him you'll kick yourself for it even more later."

Part of Wyatt knew she was right. The rest of him was certain that no matter what he could say, or do, what Johnny needed was space. There was even a fatalistic part of him—small, but present—that wondered if he would maybe need space forever; that this distance and uncertainty Wyatt had introduced would always be there, that the change Jen had talked about could only be for the worse. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe so.”

Jen picked up her drink again. “So,” she said. “What do you think you want to say to the Sorcerer Supreme?”

They spent the rest of dinner making Wyatt a game plan for asking for advice without handing over the spiritual operations of his nation to the great white wizard. They lingered over drinks. Wyatt wondered several times if he should make the move to say goodnight, but it had been months since he was able to talk to someone who knew every portion of his life like this, who he didn’t have to compartmentalize with. There were so few people that was true of at all; when he thought about it, it really narrowed down to two. He wondered how long they’d been alone in the same category before he’d noticed.

Jen drained her little copper mug. “Y’know,” she said. “It’s still pretty early. Can I wheedle you into taking in some culture?”

Wyatt made a face at her in mock-offense. “Are you implying that we don’t have culture in the great state of Oklahoma?”

Jen checked her watch. “The opposite, actually,” she said, “I think we’re importing y’all now. I hear the new big thing on Broadway’s got cowboys, and if we hurry I bet we could snag standing room tickets.”

“Sold,” said Wyatt immediately. “I always feel bad sitting down in the theatre anyway, unless I’m in the very back row.” 

Jen snickered at him. “The few months there where I could swap back down to being five foot nothing were really useful for that, I gotta say. Got a lot less glares coming out of the movies.”

Wyatt hummed. “Maybe I should look into getting a smaller alter ego, that does sound convenient.”

Jen flagged down their waiter. “You got any really shrimpy cousins who could give you a blood transfusion?”

 _Crazy For You_ was, in fact, about cowboys—the cultural accuracy was perhaps a bit lacking, but Wyatt was just glad no one showed up in tasselled leather and cobbled-together head-dresses. It was also about patience, and waiting for love, and understanding the things that you want, and Wyatt found himself shifted slow by the music of it, swaying back not into the fatalism that had come over him in the restaurant but into a kind of quiet hope: time would mend any awkwardness, it always had before, and there was no need for him to muddle up that process by showing up unannounced on Johnny’s doorstep.

For now he was content to walk the Manhattan streets. Or perhaps not content, but contemplative, and calm, and grateful for the woman at his side. 

He tried to express that gratitude, stumblingly: “Things may not have worked out between us the the way I’d hoped,” he said, meaning both the failed seduction and the cancelled marriage, and also sort of neither, “but that our friendship has endured makes me feel all the more fortunate.”

Jen smiled and squeezed his hand, but her eyes were distracted; some of the looseness of her shoulders when she’d determined they were “alone” in the restaurant had gone.

They were interrupted by a homeless veteran, who Jen handed some change. Wyatt could hear him muttering to himself as they continued on their way. He would have thought nothing of it, but Jen had gone quiet and when he touched her shoulder to raise an enquiring brow, she just smiled a little. “Remember how I said someone always showed up looking for a fight when you were around?”

Wyatt jerked a thumb behind them. “Him? Surely not."

She shook her head. “Not personally,” she said. “But that was _something_. You can’t feel it? Like a storm brewing.”

Wyatt resettled his shoulders, trying to smell lightning on the wind, but there was nothing. Just the autumn air and the warmth of Jen’s skin through her jacket and dress against the palm he’d settled unthinking at the small of her back.

He followed her into her apartment building automatically, and then realized neither of them had discussed him coming home with her at all. Once upon a time it would have been assumed, but he'd booked himself a hotel room anyway. It occurred to him, as the elevator doors closed after him, that this new--whatever it was with Johnny hadn't just introduced uncertainty into his relationship with him, but with Jen as well. 

The whole thing made him feel unbalanced. Did he ask? Was she feeling the uncertainty, or for her, had nothing changed? If he asked, would it only spread, make her anxious unnecessarily? Unlike his hesitance in the restaurant, he knew that change, here, was not something he wanted; in a larger sense the stability of this was important to him, and in a smaller, well. It was difficult to spend this much time with the Sensational She-Hulk and not want her.

“Hey,” said Jen, as the elevator _dinged_ her floor, “when you said earlier that we were friends.”

Wyatt looked at her sideways, raising an eyebrow. 

She smirked. "Just wondering if that friendship still has benefits when it's just the two of us, is all, or if that's a group activity now." 

Relief flooded Wyatt. He followed her out of the elevator, keeping his face politely neutral. "Absolutely," he said. "I'd say there are innumerable benefits to our friendship. For example, today I benefited from your company, your wisdom, your taste in musicals, your friendships with the extremely wealthy… I can honestly say that friendship with you has enriched my life deeply."

"I feel like you're attempting to be annoying right now, gorgeous, but it's just coming out flattery." Jen unlocked her door, opened it, and waited. 

Wyatt sketched a bow and walked in.

"I've gotta send Jan an edible arrangement," Jen murmured, closing the door behind them.

Wyatt turned, laughing. "Why, Ms. Walters, were you wining and dining me?" 

"Whiskeying and dining, but yeah," Jen said, immediately shedding her jacket. "What can I say, it's been a while since I've seen Herc."

Wyatt followed suit, laying his coat across the back of her couch. "I guess I can live with being second best to an actual demi-god."

"Remind me what you can do with that mouth, and maybe I'll rearrange my rankings," said Jen. “He’s good with his hands, but he never shuts up long enough for anything else.”

Wyatt licked his lips as she kicked off her heels, reducing the height difference between them to a mere five inches. He stepped forward, running his hands up her sides, and she leaned in to kiss him, slow and pleased. He felt his body relax, a pleasant and familiar desire running through his veins. He kissed her jaw, her throat, sucking at her skin until she sighed, her hands going to his head and pushing—gentle but insistent—downward.

He sank to his knees immediately, maybe embarrassingly so, because she laughed at him. “Mm. Missed this.”

“Me, too.” He skimmed his palms over her knees, up under her dress to slowly roll her tights down her legs. 

She shifted, maybe making it easier for him, maybe just anticipatory. He ran his thumbs appreciatively against the muscles of her thighs, the contrast between the softness of her skin and her obvious, impossible strength making his dick twitch. It hit him how much he had missed this, missed the smell of her, the taste, the way she ground against his mouth. "Me, too," he said again, raising his eyes to her face. "Missed you."

Jen had slipped the straps of her dress off her shoulders and was toying with one of her nipples through her bra. She raised an eyebrow at him. “That so?” she asked. “How much?"

Wyatt grinned, wrapped his hands around her hips, and leaned in to show her.

+

He woke up on her couch, one or both of them having decided that sleeping in the same bed might be stretching the boundaries of whatever friendship _plus_ arrangement they had going on, to find Jen dressed in her workout clothes and staring out her kitchen window, her face oddly slack.

“Uh,” he said. “Good morning?”

She turned abruptly. “I’m going to the Met,” she said. “You wanna come?”

Wyatt stared at her. There was an odd, glassy sheen to her eyes. In the metaphor they’d established the night before, he could hear thunder rolling in over the city skyline. “I was planning on attempting to see Strange this morning,” he reminded her cautiously.

She shrugged, her movements jerky. “Do whatever you want,” she said, and then she walked directly through her apartment door without opening it.

Wyatt sighed, pulled on his jeans, and called Four Freedoms Plaza.

He asked for Sue, telling himself it was because she was presumably leading the team after Reed’s—disappearance—but she wasn’t there; none of them were there. Roberta informed him cheerfully that she and Ben and Lyja were “away,” and that Johnny had quit the team entirely in favor of working with something called the Fantastic Force, who had their headquarters in the Baxter Building.

“Well,” he muttered to himself, hailing a cab. “I guess that tells me how he feels about working with his ex-wife.”

It did seem like he was doing okay at keeping his mind off of it, because when Wyatt arrived he was talking about going on a date. 

He listened long enough to remember that Laura Greene was the blonde from the archaeological dig, and then he stepped from the shadows. “Say, pardon me, can anyone spare a nickel for a down on his luck Keewazi chieftain?”

Johnny spun. At his back Wyatt recognized T’Challa, King of Wakanda, or at least someone in his Black Panther suit, but everyone else was strangers. There was a second Wakandan, judging by his outfit, and a large-shouldered pink creature with impressive sideburns and small fangs. And then, finally, a tall blond man in shining silver armor, younger than Johnny, though not by much, and so like him Wyatt had a moment of wondering if Jen had neglected to inform him of a clone or long-lost little brother. 

“I don’t believe it,” said Johnny, and Wyatt reluctantly looked back to him, only to have his reluctance washed away by the unfeigned delight in Johnny’s face. “Wyatt Wingfoot!”

“That’s my name, old buddy, don’t wear it out,” Wyatt said, his relief making him stupid. Johnny made no move to cross the space between them and hug him, so he stayed where he was, but that smile had warmed him to his toes. “I checked for you at Four Freedoms, but they said you were here.”

“Yeah, got a team of fresh young faces,” said Johnny, and jerked a thumb at his lookalike. “Including my nephew Franklin.”

Wyatt stared from him to the tall young man. “Franklin?” He’d seen Franklin at the wedding, had been a regular babysitter for him not two years ago. When he’d been about five.

Franklin, clearly at least eighteen, raised a sheepish armored hand in hello.

“So what brings you to the big apple?” Johnny asked, his voice light, nothing in his face but innocent curiosity.

“Keewazi business brought me to Manhattan,” Wyatt replied, “but a more personal matter brings me here.”

The stiffening of Johnny’s shoulders was so slight that Wyatt may have made it up, but it was his large, bestial friend who asked, “Personal?”

Wyatt nodded. “It’s Jen,” he explained. “Something’s wrong with the She-Hulk, and there’s no telling when she might explode.”

The Force was all business after that. T’Challa took a moment to grip Wyatt by the shoulder in hello, which he appreciated—he’d always liked the Panther, ever since they’d met on his first ever adventure with the Fantastic Four, and it was heartening to think maybe the sentiment was returned. He wondered briefly if T’Challa had ever had sovereignty issues in regard to colonialist magic and if he might ask for advice, and then was swept away by the still-disorientingly-tall Franklin to intercept Jen at the Met. 

They were just in time to see her easily take out an entire SWAT team—Wyatt felt a stab of wholly inappropriate pride—and then Franklin had deposited him a safe distance away and was flying circles around her with Johnny, his armor shining silver, reflecting his uncle’s flames as they snapped banter between them and Jen herself. 

It was and wasn’t like watching the Four in action. At first it seemed like the Storms were the heart of the team, their movements practiced with one another as they dodged and destroyed the various pieces of city blocks that Jen was hurling at them, but the longer Wyatt watched the more it became clear that the rest of the team followed Franklin’s lead, not Johnny’s, and if anything he was the wrench in an otherwise relatively well-oiled machine. 

It was T’Challa who ended it, scooping the strange golden idol that seemed the source of Jen’s possession into his hands and standing tall against her wrath, a calm and kingly figure. Wyatt raced toward him, a horrible fear in his gut that the play—a smart one, and one that respected Jen deeply—wouldn’t work, and he was about to watch his best friend kill one of his oldest allies. But Jen’s fist stopped inches from the black hood of the Panther costume, her body slumping like a marionette with the strings cut.

“I placed myself in physical jeopardy,” T’Challa explained to the rest of the Force, “gambling that even under the physical influence of another, our friend could not take a life.”

Wyatt helped Jen straighten, and she grinned at him, exhausted, her eyes her own again. He tilted their foreheads together in relief.

“I told you,” Jen said softly, “the brawl was only a matter of time.”

Wyatt laughed. “I admit, I wasn’t expecting your opponents to include the other subject of our conversation last night.” 

Jen winced. “I didn’t hurt him, did I?”

Wyatt shrugged. “You threw his big Inhuman friend at him pretty hard, but he seems fine.” He glanced at Johnny, and was startled to find him looking back, staring at him and Jen where they were boneless and intertwined in their relief. Their eyes met for only a split second, and then Johnny was turning to his team. No. Not his team. Franklin’s team, who he’d adopted when his own—his family—had shifted into something in which he no longer felt welcome. “He seems…” he revised, and turned back to Jen, giving her sort of a half-shrug.

She half-shrugged back, stepping back from him a little. “Are you glad you’re here to see how he seems?”

“Yeah,” said Wyatt, truthfully. “I am.”

Jen stretched, cracking her neck. “Then I’m glad I got possessed, or whatever.” She grinned crookedly at him. “Forced you to talk to him, rather than run back to your tribal woes.”

“I mean, we haven’t really talked,” Wyatt admitted, “other than saying hello. But I would like to, I think.” Even if he wasn’t entirely sure what he would even say.

“Well, I’m not letting whoever did this to me get away with it,” Jen said, “so I’m happy to be an excuse for you to hang around til you get your chance.”

Wyatt didn’t, not for days. He found himself constantly and frustratingly on the sidelines as Johnny inaccurately ascribed blame for Jen’s possession to the Puppet Master, got chewed out by (the real) Alicia for it, and hired Jen as attorney in a complex case against the other Wakandan member of the Force, Vibraxas. He moved his stuff out of his hotel and into Jen’s apartment, continuing to sleep on her couch, and then flew with the others to Wakanda itself.

Even at the hearing he found himself next to Franklin rather than Johnny. The preternaturally aged teen, it turned out, wasn’t in fact the Franklin Wyatt had known, though he seemed fond enough of him; from what Wyatt could gather he’d been raised by his paternal grandfather in a dimension outside of time. Wyatt found him difficult to talk to, though he wasn’t sure whether it was because of Franklin’s simultaneously distant and affectionate attitude with him—and with everyone; he seemed always like he was one step out of pace with the world—or his own frustration at feeling like a useless tag-along on this second visit to the impressive African nation.

When he finally spoke to Johnny it was on Johnny’s terms, not his. They were on the sidelines of T’Challa’s training room, watching Jen and Franklin face off against an array of high-tech robot opponents. 

“It’s like the X-Men’s Danger Room,” said Johnny quietly.

Wyatt blinked. “What?”

“They’ve got some kind of big underground complex they run training sessions in,” said Johnny. “I’ve never actually seen it, but I imagine it’s like this.”

“Seems useful,” said Wyatt, drifting a little closer. 

Johnny smirked, not quite looking at him. “Not as useful as facing off against Sue,” he said, and then made a face, like he regretted mentioning his sister. 

“Johnny,” said Wyatt. 

“Remember the first time we came here, Wyatt?” Johnny asked abruptly.

Wyatt almost laughed. As if he’d been thinking about anything else since they’d arrived: how different it felt to be here weighted with their shared history, with his new uncertainty. How different this stressed, serious Johnny was from the wildly emotional youth of years before. 

“How could I forget? It was my first adventure alongside the Fantastic Four!” He took a breath, knowing he had to try to say _something,_ that this might be his only chance before he had to return to America. “Those times together helped open my eyes,” he said, willing Johnny to actually look him in the face. “Taught me that in this world, all things are possible."

“Yeah,” said Johnny, not taking that conversation hook at all, though whether he was avoiding it or simply hadn’t recognized it for what it was Wyatt couldn’t tell. “Wish Laura Greene had come along for the ride. Given her interest in anthropology, this would’ve been right up her alley.”

Wyatt dismissed an uncharitable thought about how it was also right up _his_ alley, if Johnny had deigned to talk to him about anything that was going on. Directly comparing himself to the woman Johnny was currently dating wasn’t exactly giving him the time and space he needed. He listened as Johnny moved on, suggesting that T’Challa might be able to provide an international headquarters for the Force. 

He wondered if that small moment of reminiscing had been an olive branch. Johnny had moved on from it so quickly, like he’d just wanted to touch base with Wyatt, and through the days afterward it felt like maybe that really had been what it was: Johnny was looser around him, laughing more, and the times he was silent and serious were more focused, rather than a generalized tension against the whole world.

Wyatt felt less useless, as well: the situation with Vibraxas escalated to earth-shaking, giant-walking-psychic-mound-of-vibranium levels, and Wyatt helped Jen and the Wakandan council to evacuate the city to avoid civilians from being absorbed into its mass. Carrying a child across his shoulders and helping an old woman skirt around a pile of rubble, Wyatt remembered the reasons he liked rubbing shoulders with the caped crowd in general, and not just one specific golden light of a person. He liked to be the guy who cleaned up the little messes, who saw as best he could to the safety of the small while his friends and found family fought the impossibly large.

Johnny found him after the fight, exhausted, his limbs visibly trembling, and without pausing closed the distance between them to pull Wyatt into a hug. Wyatt instinctively wrapped his arms around him, mind gone blank with surprise, and Johnny buried his face in his shoulder.

“Johnny?” he asked, softly, once he could hear again over the thundering of his heart.

Johnny didn’t move. “She’s dead,” he said, his voice muffled by Wyatt’s shirt. “Vibraxas’ mother. She was at the center of the thing, whatever it is, and now she’s gone.”

Wyatt bit his lip. Johnny never spoke about his own parents—”family” from him had always meant Sue, Reed, and Ben—but he imagined there were old wounds there, and with Reed’s loss so fresh…

He ran a hand up the back of Johnny’s neck to wind his fingers into his hair and pretended not to feel the tears soaking through his shirt. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry about all of it.”

After a moment of quick, harsh breathing Johnny pulled back. “Thank you,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I just—it’s not what I imagined.”

Wyatt tucked his hands into his pockets to keep from catching the stray tear clinging to his chin. “What isn’t?”

“This team,” said Johnny. “This _life,_ I thought. I thought I could strike out on my own and be something to them, a leader, a, a mentor, but.” He shook his head sharply. “Turns out my baby nephew is a better leader to them than I could ever be, and I can’t even save the people most important to them.”

“You saved a whole city,” Wyatt pointed out gently, “a whole _country_. You did, with Franklin, with this team. That’s got to be worth something.”

“The needs of the many, huh?” asked Johnny, running a hand through his hair and squinting up at him in the sunset light.

Wyatt blinked at him. “Sorry?”

Johnny made a disgusted noise and turned away, leading Wyatt back to the rest of the team. “I always forget you’ve never seen _Star Trek._ It’s like my brain rejects it as a fact too ridiculous to keep around.”

Wyatt chuckled. “Sorry. It’s my worst quality, probably.”

“Oh, by far,” Johnny agreed. “One day I’m gonna make you watch it with me, and then you’ll be perfect.”

They rejoined the others, but Wyatt was reasonably sure only Jen could tell he was blushing furiously. She waited until Johnny was engaged in conversation with T’Challa, leaned around him, and mouthed, _all okay?_

Wyatt gave her a slightly embarrassed thumb’s up.

He flew back to Oklahoma almost immediately after returning to Manhattan, his work trip slash vacation already nearly two weeks longer than he’d intended, and realized he’d asked absolutely no one for advice on how to handle his magic problem. He flopped down on his bed, running his hands over his face. He could still feel the way Johnny had clung to him, his words after the hug crystal-clear like his touch had been a signal to Wyatt’s subconscious to record them in case they were Important.

The next day he found Rain Falling West in her office. “Hey,” he said, “can you help me with something?”

“Welcome home,” she said, “first of all, and second of all, of course, what is it?”

He leaned against her doorframe. “I want to contact everyone who’s sent me petitions about the Beatrice fallout,” he said. “Bring them together to talk to each other.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Let them solve it themselves?”

He shrugged. “I’m not the expert, here,” he said. “I can’t come in and pretend I know how to run things, and it won’t do any good to ask anyone else who has even _less_ idea than I do. All of these practitioners have been doing this a long time, and can call upon the wisdom of their own elders. I just need to give them a space to share that wisdom.”

Rain leaned back in her chair. “Smart,” she said. “You come to any insightful conclusions about your roomie problem, too?”

Wyatt shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “But I think I am learning to live with the uncertainty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this covers uh Fantastic Force #12 - 16. Maybe eventually I'll cover more than one Wyatt appearance per chapter but it currently seems UNLIKELY
> 
> reed "dies" in Fantastic Four #381 in a dramatic and romantic handclasp with Doom, bc of course, and the rest of the FF find him pretty much directly after Fantastic Force #16.
> 
> wyatt's sister rain falling west is established as existing in she-hulk: ceremony which as jen points out is negligibly canon, but i liked her and wanted to flesh out wyatt's family life a little, so here she is.
> 
> also a quick note that if any of the stuff re: native americans is uncomfortable/problematic please let me know - i'm white and this is definitely not my lane, so this chapter is probably the most it's going to be touched on, but it's an important aspect of Wyatt's character that I didn't want to ignore. takes on it in the comics have been almost exclusively bad, so i'm trying to piece together whatever salvageable bits I can in a world where also like, magic is real. I hope that it reads well, but again please let me know if it doesn't!
> 
> tune in next time for ONSLAUGHT and HEROES REBORN no i'm joking i'm skipping all that bc it doesn't involve this Wyatt, come join me when everybody's back in town in Claremont's run :)


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